D&D 5E CHALLENGE: Change one thing about 5e

[Herobizkit]

Remember the OD&D Rules Cyclopedia?
Remember the 1e Dungeoneer and the Wilderness Survival Guide?
Remember the 2e Castle Guide?
Remember the 3e ... uh... Stronghold Builder's Guide?

Re-print all of that campaign/world-building relevant info, updated to 5e.

Also, drop Darkvision from all the standard races; bring lack low-light vision. Save Darkvision for the "baddies" and make the night dark and full of terrors once again.

Also, re-think 3e UA-style Gestalt characters... make them work somehow.

 

[alienux]

I think that combat tends to be a little too easy *most of the time* and that the threat of death isn't as significant as it should be.

 

[Horwath]

Ready action does not consume reaction when it is triggered. You just take your action before the trigger. To deal with those pesky archers. Also you can make any action that is normally takes as an action(multiattack/extra attack)

Attack of opportunity does not consume reaction when triggered. You can make a number of AoOs per round equal to your proficiency modifier.

Bringing back delay mechanics. This moves your initiative after the action that triggered delay. I.E. as a rogue you could say that you acting after your fighter if you get higher initiative roll.

Saves without proficiency add half the modifier(round down).

full spellcasters should have 10th level spells, one spell slot at 19th level. So even 2 level multiclass will bar the highest spells from being available.

Spell up-ranking of damage spells is terrible. Good rule would be +3 dice of damage per spell level for single target spells and +2 dice for AoE spells.

Medium armor removed. Ad an more expensive light armor that gives AC 13 +dex.

All classes with medium armor are now just proficient with light. Maybe add extra skill to compensate.


All classes get extra attack feature.

Full martial classes get extra attack every 4 levels after 1st(1,5,9,13,17), fighters would get 6th attack at 20th level and some other stuff to buff up now relative weak capstone.

Full spellcasters get extra attack every 16 levels(1,17)

some classes(like rogue, maybe bard or warlock could be hybrd), extra attack every 8 levels(1,9,17)

cantrip damage would also scale on 1,5,9,13,17 mechanics.


offhand attack with dual wielding is made as a part of attack action with main hand weapon.

you would get a number of off hand attacks equal to half the number of attacks in main hand(round up), that means for martial classes 1 off hand attack at lvl1, 2 attacks at lvl9, 3 attacks at lvl17.


tone down or split the feats so they all become half feats.

you get bonus now "half-feat" at lvl 1,5,9,13,17.

delete variant humans. give humans something more to be more competitive. I.E. extra 2 skills proficiencies and one extra weapon or tool proficiency.


add something to intelligence that makes it worth to anyone except wizards.
Like adding extra skill proficiency per point of bonus and extra language or tool proficiency per point of bonus.


Magic attunement: you can be attuned to number of magic items equal to half your proficiency bonus(round down) or your charisma bonus, whichever is higher.


some skill merging of not so usable/used skills;

thief tools and sleight of hands are now merged into thievery: you still need to have thief tools with you to disable traps or open locks. Rogues are proficient with this skill by default.

Investigation merged into perception; just to end the debate...

animal handling merged into survival,

Medicine skill expansion: during short rest you can tend the wounds of your party. With DC 15 medicine check you can add your proficiency bonus to any healing dice rolled for restoring HPs. With DC 25 check you add twice your proficiency bonus to any HDs rolled.



OK, maybe more than one thing...

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Stor right there Saelorn. What you're really saying is: you want less monsters and less combat in your world.

The only reason healing is as generous in 5E is because you want to get to the fun stuff - the kobolds in the next room.

What I want is for the outcome of being beaten nearly to death to not be something you can sleep off in an hour. I want the game mechanics to reflect the in-game reality which they represent a little more closely. I'm fine without applying massive penalties or complications due to infection or anything, as long as the characters still have to acknowledges that yes, they actually were hit by that sword, and yes it did hurt.

Or more to the point, for the sake of role-playing, I want players to want to avoid injury as much as their characters do. I don't want a player to jump off a cliff in order to win a race, confident in the knowledge that they can take ~70 damage and they'll be fine when they can catch their breath. Any other ramifications on the world can be dealt with correspondingly. If that means fewer fights, or fights against weaker enemies, then that's tangential.

 

[CapnZapp]

What I want is for the outcome of being beaten nearly to death to not be something you can sleep off in an hour. I want the game mechanics to reflect the in-game reality which they represent a little more closely. I'm fine without applying massive penalties or complications due to infection or anything, as long as the characters still have to acknowledges that yes, they actually were hit by that sword, and yes it did hurt.

Or more to the point, for the sake of role-playing, I want players to want to avoid injury as much as their characters do. I don't want a player to jump off a cliff in order to win a race, confident in the knowledge that they can take ~70 damage and they'll be fine when they can catch their breath. Any other ramifications on the world can be dealt with correspondingly. If that means fewer fights, or fights against weaker enemies, then that's tangential.

Hah Brings back them memories...

But seriously, there's nothing wrong with your desires, and lots of (okay, some) games offer that kind of experience, with slow and brutal healing.

D&D just isn't that game.

You can't both have realistic healing and intense excitement "will you win with a single HP left" kind of battles, not if you want to move on to the next exciting combat.

D&D is simply not a game where you avoid damage. D&D is a game where you relish combat, and shrug off damage like an action hero.

D&D can be tweaked into more of the game you want, but it starts pretty far from it and really never gets very close (in my opinion).

I know what you describe can be had in much more satisifying ways than D&D will ever give you*. I also understand you like the rest of D&D's undeniable advantages.

My best advice is therefore this:

Go find a realistic fantasy game and enjoy that for what it is. Then come back when you've slaked your thirst for exhausted battered heroes, to enjoy D&D for what it does best: (relative) beer'n'pretzels hack'n'slash and larger'n'life magical action heroes.


*) I'm afraid I don't really have any good suggestions here, except good old Warhammer FRP. I'm sure there are American (or at least english-language) games of this kind out there; perhaps other forumists will provide pointers.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But seriously, there's nothing wrong with your desires, and lots of (okay, some) games offer that kind of experience, with slow and brutal healing.

D&D just isn't that game.

You can't both have realistic healing and intense excitement "will you win with a single HP left" kind of battles, not if you want to move on to the next exciting combat.

If 5E is not that game, which we'll assume for now as a given, then the question is why not? Certainly, D&D was that game, back in the nineties and up through the aughts. In every edition prior to 4E, you could get injured and have that damage last for a week. The primary rule for survival was to avoid combat whenever possible, and the secondary rule for when combat was inevitable was to fight on your terms and avoid taking damage. If you wanted to hurry along to the next combat after you were already beaten down, for whatever reason, then you had magic to fix that.

And then 4E came along, with its standardized assumptions about how many encounters you should face in a day (severely upgraded from the mere guidelines of 3E), and its abundant non-magical healing, and it's like they forgot everything that was great about the game other than combat. Suddenly everyone was trying to get into fights, as though that was the whole point of adventuring.

And you'd think, what with their stated intent of giving players a new edition that really felt like D&D - in implicit contrast with 4E - that they wouldn't just steal the 4E healing model and make that their starting point. But no, they didn't actually care about letting players experience anything like the golden age of Second Edition. They just cared about making the game easy to learn for new players, such that 2E fans are encouraged to find their fun elsewhere.

 

[alienux]

If 5E is not that game, which we'll assume for now as a given, then the question is why not? Certainly, D&D was that game, back in the nineties and up through the aughts. In every edition prior to 4E, you could get injured and have that damage last for a week. The primary rule for survival was to avoid combat whenever possible, and the secondary rule for when combat was inevitable was to fight on your terms and avoid taking damage. If you wanted to hurry along to the next combat after you were already beaten down, for whatever reason, then you had magic to fix that.

And then 4E came along, with its standardized assumptions about how many encounters you should face in a day (severely upgraded from the mere guidelines of 3E), and its abundant non-magical healing, and it's like they forgot everything that was great about the game other than combat. Suddenly everyone was trying to get into fights, as though that was the whole point of adventuring.

And you'd think, what with their stated intent of giving players a new edition that really felt like D&D - in implicit contrast with 4E - that they wouldn't just steal the 4E healing model and make that their starting point. But no, they didn't actually care about letting players experience anything like the golden age of Second Edition. They just cared about making the game easy to learn for new players, such that 2E fans are encouraged to find their fun elsewhere.

As much as I love 5E, I sure can't disagree with much of what you've said, apart from having to find fun elsewhere. Otherwise, yeah, I miss the older style of healing. At least the "Slower Natural Healing" option in the DMG is a step in that direction.

 

[Sacrosanct]

You can't both have realistic healing and intense excitement "will you win with a single HP left" kind of battles, not if you want to move on to the next exciting combat.

D&D is simply not a game where you avoid damage. D&D is a game where you relish combat, and shrug off damage like an action hero.
.

Um, yes it is (or was). D&D was exactly that type of game for 25 years. Extremely slow non-magical healing, combat was better to be avoided, etc. Obviously it has already proven, in spades, that it can be that type of game.

 

[CapnZapp]

If 5E is not that game, which we'll assume for now as a given, then the question is why not? Certainly, D&D was that game, back in the nineties and up through the aughts. In every edition prior to 4E, you could get injured and have that damage last for a week. The primary rule for survival was to avoid combat whenever possible, and the secondary rule for when combat was inevitable was to fight on your terms and avoid taking damage. If you wanted to hurry along to the next combat after you were already beaten down, for whatever reason, then you had magic to fix that.

Ah, ok, well maybe I should clarify I am not putting so much weight on the difference between magic and not.

I mean, my first reaction to what you wrote was "every edition before 4E???? Has Saelorn never come across a player character with CLW wands out his ears?"

You are correct that there were rules for non-magical healing that was at least a smidge realistic.

The answer is, I think, that the 5E designers have simply concluded that most players don't make that distinction, and so they made "non-magical" healing work almost as fast as magical healing. Put otherwise: yes, d20 had rules for natural healing, but they never saw any use...

Most players, I think, certainly since 2000 and the advent of d20, would say the primary rule is for the game to be fun, and long periods of downtime isn't that. In short: nobody wants to keep going when a) they aren't at full hit points and b) it's so easy to rest

The generous healing rules is simply a reflection on that, that does away with the stoopid CLW wands.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*